Disney To Build 30 Hi-Tech Gaming Centers Worldwide
Disney is jumping into the location-based entertainment market with plans to spend more than $1 billion in the next 10 years building high-tech gaming centers that are two to three times bigger than those recently opened by the Sega GameWorks venture.
The company’s year-old Disney Regional Entertainment unit has plans to open as many as 30 DisneyQuest centers worldwide in the coming decade, beginning with a 100,000-square-foot site in Orlando next summer and a second 90,000-square-foot site in Chicago in the summer of 1999.
The DisneyQuest sites are designed for families and kids to spend two to three hours playing virtual reality, Internet and computer-based games and eating, said DRE president Art Levin. But he said that unlike the first 25,000-square-foot Club Disney center for young kids that DRE introduced in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in February, the DisneyQuest sites will also likely draw tourists and conventioneers.
An older demographic for such high-tech recreation centers would put DisneyQuest in competition with similar location-based sites called GameWorks that have opened this year in Seattle, Las Vegas and Ontario, Calif., by a partnership made up of Universal Studios, DreamWorks SKG and the Sega video game company. Those sites, generally between 30,000 and 50,000 square feet, cater to young adults and have bars serving alcoholic beverages. The GameWorks venture has announced plans to open 100 such sites worldwide in the next five years.
In order to avoid the DisneyQuest centers being used as after-school hangouts or care centers, an entrance fee of $5-$7 will be charged, entitling the customer to play a couple of games. Additional fees will be charged on a pay-per-play basis for all games at the center, with Disney and American Express partnered on a DisneyQuest stored value card that will be used as the primary form of payment.
DisneyQuest will feature four entertainment environments: Explore Zone, a virtual adventure land; the Score Zone, for competitive gaming; the Create Zone, where customers may use the latest technologies to create their own animation and artistic designs and Replay Zone, an area featuring traditional games and rides.
The first DisneyQuest will be part of the new Disney’s West End area being built adjacent to Disney’s Pleasure Island at the Walt Disney World Resort. That area and the first DisneyQuest is expected to open next summer.
Additional sites will be built at the Disney theme parks in Anaheim, Paris and Tokyo, Levin said.